I currently travel the world looking for great stories to live, interesting tales to share, and teaching business owners how to grow with words. My article work has been featured in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Yahoo! Small Business, The Shine Network, The Huffington Post, Brazen Careerist and I am a frequent guest author on modern feminist, young professional, and entrepreneurial websites. I firmly believe every problem in the world could be solved with a vicious game of rock, paper, scissors. You can also find me on my other websites, ElisaDoucette.com or on Twitter @elisadoucette.

Is Abercrombie & Fitch The Newest Member Of The Mean Girls?

It has been a while since Abercrombie & Fitch had a good round of bad publicity due to their company principles and beliefs.

Who can forget the Thong Scandal of 2002 (thongs emblazoned with such age-appropriate nether-region comments as “Eye Candy” and “Wink Wink” marketed to preteens) or the 2005 Silk-Screen Debacle (girls printed tees with forward-thinking phrases like “Who Needs a Brain When You Have These?” and “Gentlemen Prefer Tig Ol’ Bitties.”)

In 2004 they settled a whopping $40 million class action lawsuit brought by minority employees in their stores.

Aside from an odd underwear-on-private-jet-stewards incident from last fall, A&F has managed to stay out of the press for the most part regarding their sensational practices and seemingly-edgy product line. Which has been good for them, since the most prominent mentions they have had over the past few years have instead been quarter-after-quarter profit declines and an announcement in February of 2012 that they would be shutting down 180 stores over the next three years (about 17.5% of their retail locations domestic and overseas.)

Yet last week, in a bizarre unearthing of a random Salon.com article from 2006, the folks over at Business Insider reported that Abercrombie & Fitch refuses to make clothes for large women. A&F has remained tight-lipped since the article ran, not dignifying any press inquiries with a comment or statement.

The perplexing thing about this whole situation is that this article, and the resulting firestorm that has followed, is that people are acting as if this is brand new information. That in the past few weeks Abercrombie & Fitch suddenly upended their entire product-line and marketing funnel to scope their focus.

“It’s almost everything. That’s why we hire good-looking people in our stores. Because good-looking people attract other good-looking people, and we want to market to cool, good-looking people. We don’t market to anyone other than that” – A&F CEO Mike Jeffries

I was not surprised at all to learn this week that Abercrombie & Fitch doesn’t market to or create for fat, unattractive, unpopular, not cool people. Perhaps I have been living under some massive rock or my past two years traveling abroad have shielded me from this revolution, but I have never known a time when A&F did not market their line of over-priced polos and crisp-cut trousers to the beautiful, skinny, affluent, cool kids of the world.

Make no mistake, Jeffries’ comments from nearly seven years ago are spiteful and filled with everything that is wrong with body image and self-esteem for young people today. He merely said what the fashion industry continues to reinforce daily. The thing is, rather than just inferring it with their Photo-shopped magazine spreads and waif-thin European catwalk models, he was silly enough to say it in his out-loud voice.

“In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids. Candidly, we go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely. - Jeffries

This is where investors and shoppers and employees should be concerned. That the man leading this company, if he still believes in the statements he made seven years ago, does not share the same guiding principles his company is built to grow on.

It is our mission to continue our efforts to support human rights, stand for and achieve diversity & inclusion, invest in our associates, give back to our communities, commit to environmental sustainability efforts and make responsible business decisions.

This inclusion appears to be the sort of inclusion that is only kind of inclusive. You know, the kind of inclusive that a company puts in its Corporate Social Responsibility Mission when it wants to appear as if it is an inclusive company that socially conscious people should continue doing business with. Especially a company who spent the first half of last decade battling bad press about their lack of and complete disregard for corporate social responsibility.

The question now becomes, who should consumers believe?

The CEO who speaks on behalf of a company that carries out his vision or the company that has spent the better part of the past ten years improving its internal initiatives and external messaging to show that they are better than a catty bunch of school kids in the lunch room.

It is one thing to want to market and sell to those kids. It is another thing entirely to run your company like you are one of them.

Post Your Comment

Post Your Reply

Forbes writers have the ability to call out member comments they find particularly interesting. Called-out comments are highlighted across the Forbes network. You'll be notified if your comment is called out.